An excerpt from Flip-Flops After 50

I Don’t Have Much, but I Love What I’ve Got A while back, I received—or bought—an orchid. (It may have been a gift, but I don’t remember. One of the things I don’t have much of is memory.) It bloomed on the table in the kitchen for months, until, one by one, the delicate petals fell off, leaving only broad, waxy leaves and a creepy-looking stem held to a stake by a small plastic hair clasp. I didn’t want to toss it out in the garbage—that seemed harsh. It had been so pretty, and I marveled at the fact that I hadn’t killed it before its apparently natural demise. I Googled “orchids” to see if I could nurture it back to beauty once more. I wasn’t too hopeful. As it turned out, there were some easy “bring back to life” instructions on a website I found. So, as per the site’s advice, I cut back the creepy-looking stem, added some fertilizer, and waited. A couple of months later, what looked like an exposed root started to poke upward. It slowly turned from brown to green, and as it grew I used the hair clasp to secure it to the stake. I continued to water it, and eventually a tiny green shoot appeared with a small greenish bulb at the end. Then more appeared—I was getting excited—and then it bloomed. I came down one morning and saw delicate pink blossoms hanging from the tiny stems. Success! And there were more blooms after that—and, later, a stronger-looking stem as well. I pointed it out, more than once, to everyone who walked through the kitchen: “Look! It came back! It came back!” My family was not overly thrilled. But I felt like I’d just painted the Sistine Chapel. My point is that there is a lot that I can’t do. And once one gets to a certain age, it’s not likely that she is going to acquire many more skills and abilities than those she already possesses. Old dog, new tricks—that sort of thing. Some people can grow acres and acres of flora and fauna; I can’t. But I can get an orchid to come back. And that makes me happy. I like what I am able to do, and I’m grateful for what I am able to do. And I’m grateful for what others can do that I can’t, like preparing my taxes and putting a roof on my house. It’s nice to be at a stage of life in which I don’t feel like I have to do everything. I can just do the stuff that I can do—as well as I can do it—and let other people [AT1] do the stuff they can do. Why have all the fun to myself?